


Auror Alert A1995-4357-5437-2

by PrettyPinkCupcake



Series: SOW Party Memoranda and related documents (Rigel Black Chronicles) [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Rigel Black Chronicles - murkybluematter
Genre: Auror Alert, Fanfiction of Fanfiction, Gen, Harriet Potter and Archie Black disappearance, Head Auror instructions to all Aurors, Inspired by The Rigel Black Chronicles, John Dawlish thoughts, Post Ruse Reveal, Set after chapter 12 of Futile Facade, murkybluematter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:07:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26864881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrettyPinkCupcake/pseuds/PrettyPinkCupcake
Summary: Harry Potter and Archie Black have fled, whereabouts currently unknown, after revealing to the Daily Prophet that it was Halfblood Heiress Harriet Potter who won Riddle's True TriWizard Tournament, and that Harry Potter had been attending Hogwarts as Rigel Black for the last for years.Tom Riddle is NOT happy and has set the might of the Ministry (Aurors) on a nationwide, if not global, manhunt for the fugitives.But what do the Aurors actually think about this task?
Series: SOW Party Memoranda and related documents (Rigel Black Chronicles) [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1954477
Comments: 10
Kudos: 96
Collections: Rigel Black Chronicles Appreciation





	Auror Alert A1995-4357-5437-2

**Author's Note:**

> This will only make sense to fans of murkybluematter's Pureblood Pretense, Serpentine Subterfuge, Ambiguous Artifice and the Futile Facade, as it relates to key plot points in the Futile Facade, namely Riddle's Arithmancy Algorithm to match Pureblood Heirs to optimum candidates.
> 
> If you haven't read these works, you've missed something significant in the world of Harry Potter FanFiction, so what are you waiting for? Read them!
> 
> This will also make a lot more sense if you read my earlier memos, Confidential Memorandum M1995-62442-867-7, Confidential Memorandum M1995-62442-8678 and Confidential Memorandum M1995-7873-6837-1.
> 
> (BTW, the numbering is still not random...)

**Auror Alert A1995-4357-5437-2**

_ Confidential - Protected by the Aurors Only Charm _

**ALERT LEVEL INDIGO**

**To** : ALL AURORS ON ACTIVE DUTY

**From** : John Dawlish, Acting Head Auror, Department of Magical Law Enforcement

**Date** : 29 June 1995

**Issue** : _Continued search for Arcturus Rigel BLACK and Harriet (‘Harry’) POTTER_

**Previous** : A1995-4357-5437-1.

* * *

**INSTRUCTION TO ALL AURORS**

FIND and DETAIN  **Arcturus Rigel BLACK** (Heir Black, son of Lord Sirius Orion Black) and  **Harriet (‘Harry’) POTTER** (Heiress Potter, daughter of Lord James Charlus Potter), with CARE.

* * *

**_ACTION TAKEN TO DATE_ **

Questioning Lord Black, Lady Potter and Lord Potter has delivered no intelligence on their children’s whereabouts.

Searches have previously been conducted in Hogsmeade, Diagon Alley and the Lower Alleys. No sightings of the missing persons have been reported.

A watch has been placed on all the Floo Network. 

No Portkeys (international or domestic) have been registered by Potter or Black or any of their known associates. 

Black and Potter do not have apparition licences.

* * *

**WARNINGS:**

None. Black and Potter are 14 year old school children. 

* * *

**DESCRIPTIONS**

See below.

* * *

**_Arcturus Rigel BLACK (Heir Black)_ **

**Appearance** : 14 year old MALE. White European. Black hair, grey eyes. 

Could be a METAMORPHMAGUS.

**Blood status** : British Pureblood wizard. 

**Education** : Fourth year at the American Institute of Magic (AIM).

**Languages** : English. 

**Associates** : Miss Hermione GRANGER, Muggleborn, AIM student. Black may have contacts in the British muggle community through GRANGER.

**Other** : Black has studied in America and spent the previous summer interning in South America (Darien Gap). Black may have contacts abroad in both the wizarding and muggle communities who may offer them sanctuary.

* * *

**_Harriet POTTER (Heiress Potter)_ **

**Appearance** : 14 year old FEMALE. White European. Black hair, green eyes. Glasses.

Suspected of using POLYJUICE (modified) that lasts longer than one hour. 

Or could be a METAMORPHMAGUS.

**Blood status** : British Halfblood witch. 

**Education** : Fourth year at Hogwarts.

**Languages** : English, apparently fluent in French.

**Associates** : Former Hogwarts classmates including Pureblood Heirs and Heiresses: Heir Draco Lucian MALFOY, Heiress Pandora ('Pansy') PARKINSON, Heir Theodore ('Theo') NOTT, Heiress Millicent BULSTRODE, Heir Blaise ZABINI, Heir Edmund ROOKWOOD, Heir Aldon ROSIER, Ginevra ('Ginny') WEASLEY, Ronald ('Ron') WEASLEY, Frederick ('Fred') WEASLEY, and George WEASLEY.

Former fellow Potions Guild Interns: Renaldo CASILLAS and Heir Caelum LESTRANGE.

**Other** : Potter has muggle relatives (Lady Lilian POTTER is a Muggleborn). Potter may have contacts in the British muggle community who may offer them sanctuary. 

Potter’s apparent fluency in French would enable the pair to visit France or any other French speaking country.

* * *

\- - - - - -

Acting Head Auror John Dawlish sighed as the Auror Alert magically duplicated and distributed itself to the Auror Force. The last week and a half had been horrendous, the worst of his professional career. He didn’t foresee the immediate future being any better.

Dawlish had been quite happy to be Deputy Head of Security for the Minister of Magic. He’d even been content to be the latest (temporary) Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor at Hogwarts, a position he’d been rapidly removed from in the wake of James Potter’s sudden and unexpected resignation as Head Auror. Thankfully the school term was basically over; he’d discharged all his obligations and his OWL and NEWT students in particular would no longer have need of him.

Dawlish was not happy to be in the position of Acting Head Auror and he’d made it perfectly clear to both the Minister and the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Amelia Bones, that his time as Acting Head was limited; that this was a temporary measure only.

It had been impossible to refuse the Minister’s rather pitiful entreaty that Dawlish immediately head up the Auror Department, particularly when Dawlish had every intention of returning, in the longer term, to his former position as Deputy Head of Security for the Minister of Magic. (As the Minister’s main bodyguard, watching the Minister’s antics could be quite amusing, although a certain sense of humour was needed for full appreciation.)

It had appeared that the somewhat shaken Minister had just returned from a rather disturbing briefing with the Leader of the SOW Party, Lord Riddle, and the Minister needed to fix things (read: do something)  _ immediately _ . 

Lord Riddle, it appeared, had just finished reading that day’s  _ Daily Prophet _ , and to say he was displeased with the current turn of events was akin to saying that fiendfyre was just a touch dangerous, that Unforgiveables were naughty jinxes.

Even though he’d been on sabbatical at Hogwarts at the time, the stories about Riddle’s response to the Minister's office’s ill advised memorandum chastising Riddle’s office refurbishment costs had reached him. 

It appeared that Riddle’s reaction to that little SNAFU (and Dawlish just couldn’t see how Fudge let that memo through to Riddle; not even Dawlish had ever imagined the Minister to be  _ that _ incompetent, and he’d witnessed the Minister’s talents many times) was completely dwarfed by Riddle’s reaction to the revelation - in the  _ Daily Prophet _ , no less - that Riddle’s precious True TriWizard Tournament had been won by a Halfblood. 

Professionally Dawlish maintained his usual stoic, dour, appearance when informed of the situation by the thankfully now no longer trembling Minister. 

Privately Dawlish was torn; Dawlish was himself a proud Halfblood and he was delighted that a Halfblood had won Riddle’s ridiculous blood purity test. He also had a soft spot for 'Rigel Black'; he’d been impressed no end by the child’s performance in the tournament, and his observations of the child’s attitude and outlook had been pleasing. 

The tales in the Hogwarts staffroom of Rigel’s impassioned defence of the poor unknowing Halfblood Greengrass had been heartwarming for a Halfblood, and he’d laughed hilariously at the comments the child wrote in the margins of the Auror’s Field Guide. Something in Rigel had reminded him of his once close friend and former boss, James Potter. Now he knew why.

He was, however, horrified that James Potter’s little fawn, the precious, darling daughter that James doted on, was now the subject of a nationwide, if not global, manhunt and the ire of the most magically powerful wizard in Britain. 

Dawlish didn’t know Harriet Potter per se; they’d never been officially introduced, even though he had seen the lass at various events in recent years when he’d been present in an official capacity guarding the Minister. He’d admired her masterful handling of both the Minister and the somewhat pompous Lord Malfoy at the Quidditch World Cup; he’d chortled for ages afterwards as he remembered the look on the Minister’s face as he fled the top box after Potter’s consummate performance.

He was well aware of the tales James proudly told over the years of his daughter and her accomplishments. Dawlish had been privy to James’s reaction when Jeremy Grindel, the Department’s Potions Master, had informed James that the Potions Guild Aldermaster himself was recommending young Harriet as one of the few female interns and the youngest ever intern in the Guild’s internship programme. James had been initially shocked, (Dawlish knew James just didn’t 'get' his daughter’s potions passion), but fairly bursting with pride once he realised the prestigious nature of the position his then twelve year old daughter had secured.

And the sheer pleasure on James’s face when he’d distributed his daughter’s portable ward potion to the Auror Force, not to mention the not-quite-hidden smirk when Grindel noted that neither he nor the Unspeakables had been unable to duplicate or even reverse engineer Potter’s potion.

So while Dawlish was pleased that a Halfblood had won the tournament, effectively sticking it to the Pureblood bigots he despised, he was not pleased to be in charge of a nationwide, if not global, manhunt for two fourteen year old school children, and subject to not on the Minister’s displeasure but the displeasure of Lord Riddle, when the Aurors came up empty handed.

And they would come up empty handed. Realistically, what else could anyone expect? Aurors were being asked to find two school children, and he couldn’t even say with confidence what they looked like!

At least one of them was possibly a metamorphmagus and could therefore look like anyone. One was a potions genius who had invented an entire new potions methodology that not even the Unspeakables fully understood, and who could probably brew not only ageing potions but Polyjuice. And it appeared that the Polyjuice she’d used didn’t even have the standard hour limit of normal Polyjuice. 

And then they could be  _ anywhere _ . Black had been schooled in America. He’d volunteered in a medical outpost in South America (Darien Gap). He’d had experience with international travel, and would have connections to American wizards who looked down on the snobby British Purebloods and British blood status discrimination laws with a lot more than just disdain. Plenty in wizarding America would be more than happy to help the fugitives. Those in wizarding South America would look more than favourably on a child who volunteered to help their underprivileged communities.

Potter reportedly spoke French. That opened up even more possibilities as to where the pair could have fled to. They could be in wizarding France - they could easily survive in any French speaking wizarding country, really.

When Dawlish had attempted to reach out to his Auror colleagues overseas they’d all just laughed at him. Blood identity theft was a crime only in Britain. No-one else in the world cared about it. Professionally Dawlish could afford to be nothing more than non-committal about the issue when discussing it with his international colleagues. 

But rightly so, Dawlish thought privately. He’d been tempted to state in the Auror Alert that they were looking for school children, not criminals, when he’d almost belatedly recalled that blood identity theft was a crime, and one with serious punishments, at that.

Not only would the British DMLE have difficulty with any extradition attempts (in the unlikely event that they would be able to even track down Black and Potter abroad), but it was entirely possible that the pair would be welcomed with open arms to other countries and offered sanctuary and asylum. 

Indeed, several countries were already intimating that they would be more than happy to accommodate such promising young wizards, and more would likely follow. The TriWizard tournament had been broadcast worldwide, and Potter’s prodigious talents would have been well noted. Black too, had promising academic results that AIM had proudly advertised, along with the positive reputation of the Healing programme.

And then there was the muggle world. It was huge. There were millions of British muggles. Billions of muggles worldwide. Black’s best friend was a British muggleborn. Potter’s maternal relatives were muggles. 

Even if Potter’s experience with the muggle world was limited, and as a Halfblood with a muggleborn father Dawlish knew just how difficult it could be for muggleborns to maintain their relationships with their muggle relatives, Black and Potter likely knew much more about the muggle world than the average wizard, even the average auror. The pair could easily disappear there and they’d never be found.

How on earth could the Aurors be expected to find them?

Not that many in the Auror Force were actually interested in finding them - at least not for the purpose of detaining them and returning them to Britain (really, to Lord Riddle) for punishment. Dawlish was far from being the only Halfblood, and James Potter was popular amongst his colleagues. For all that he was the boss, James Potter was not disliked by the majority of his subordinates. Politicians, on the other hand, were not often thought of fondly by the vast majority of the Ministry workforce, and everyone knew where the pressure for action was coming from.

Dawlish would never admit it, but these recent Auror Alerts could have included additional information that could prove useful to the searchers. He’d been reluctant to put in writing the potential  _ lethality  _ of Potter - putting the Alert Level at Indigo was an indication of Potter’s magical power level - but then he knew that Alastor Moody had been using scenes of Potter’s responses to the TriWizard tournament tasks in Auror training. It would be an incompetent Auror who didn’t pay attention to Moody’s lessons, and incompetent Aurors did not last long in the Force.

He’d also ignored the possibility that Potter had known associates beyond the school mates Rigel had befriended and her fellow Potions Guild interns. Sure, he’d heard James bemoan the Aldermaster’s son, Lionel Hurst, in recent years, but other than James’s overprotective father attitude and complaints to his colleagues about Hurst, there was nothing to say that Harriet was a close friend of Hurst. 

There was, however, plenty of evidence of Potter’s relationships with Rigel’s Hogwarts school mates, even though Dawlish privately suspected that few of them, the Weasley family being the exception of course, would ever give the Halfblood girl the time of day now. Thankfully he’d been removed from Hogwarts before he could have been required to deal with the teenage angst arising from the revelation of Rigel’s ruse. 

Dawlish had similarly downplayed the Lower Alleys as a possible bolt hole for the pair; despite what the general wizarding population (read: nobility) thought, by and large the Lower Alleys looked after themselves quite nicely. More so in recent years. The exception was when the Auror Force got involved - the Aurors had unintentionally stirred up quite a few hornets nests with their search for that damnable jewel and Dawlish was in no mood to repeat those blunders. 

Everyone on the Force knew of last summer’s free dueling tournament, and almost without exception everyone on the force had been more than happy to look the other way. There were no riots or problems arising; overall it had been much better managed than the Quidditch World Cup. 

Rigel’s dueling ability spoke of experience facing weapons wielding opponents; it was not beyond speculation that the child had been trained in free dueling, and entirely possible that Potter had associates in the Lower Alleys.

At any rate Dawlish wanted out of this FUBAR situation as soon as possible. He’d promised the Minister he’d act in the position for a month, and would maybe stay for a further two weeks, but that was it. Now that his teaching year at Hogwarts was over, he was happy to get back to his position guarding the Minister.

They’d have to find someone else to fill the role. Not that there would be too many volunteers in the current climate. He wasn’t the only one who could read the writing on the wall. Lord Riddle’s displeasure was not pretty, and the odds of finding Black and Potter were low.

**Author's Note:**

> Note: SNAFU and FUBAR are apparently military terms that I think apply to many more situations than people realise. SNAFU = Situation Normal, All F****d Up. FUBAR = F****d Up Beyond All Repair. Or variations of these.
> 
> Thanks for reading!
> 
> The Auror Alert numbering is not random. I think Tom Riddle would be even less happy with Dawlish if he saw and realised the meaning of this Auror Alert's numbering.
> 
> A very big thanks to Epithor for sparking my muse for this fic, and to Tsume_Yuki for having faith in my continued output. I'm not sure I can keep it up, but I will try - I think I've possibly got a least one more memo in me. :-)
> 
> As always, thoughts, comments and suggestions are more than welcome.


End file.
